Iraq: Sadr party faces rising isolation
By Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, AP, April 6, 2008
Iraq’s major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties have closed ranks to force anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or leave politics, lawmakers and officials involved in the effort said Sunday.

Such a bold move risks a violent backlash by al-Sadr’s Shiite militia. But if it succeeds it could cause a major realignment of Iraq’s political landscape.

The first step will be adding language to a draft election bill banning parties that operate militias from fielding candidates in provincial balloting this fall, the officials and lawmakers said. The government intends to send the draft to parliament within days and hopes to win approval within weeks.

U.S. and Iraqis battle militias to end attacks
By Erica Goode and Michael R Gordon, New York Times, April 7, 2008
Sharp fighting broke out in the Sadr City district of Baghdad on Sunday as American and Iraqi troops sought to control neighborhoods used by Shiite militias to fire rockets and mortars into the nearby Green Zone.

But the operation failed to stop the attacks on the heavily fortified zone, headquarters for Iraq’s central government and the American Embassy here. By day’s end, at least two American soldiers had been killed and 17 wounded in the zone, one of the worst daily tolls for the American military in the most heavily protected part of Baghdad. Altogether, at least three American soldiers were killed and 31 wounded in attacks in Baghdad on Sunday, and at least 20 Iraqis were killed, mostly in Sadr City.

The heightened violence came on the eve of Congressional testimony in Washington by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador here, to defend their strategy for political reconciliation and improved security in the country.

Permissible assaults cited in graphic detail
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, April 6, 2008
Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003, senior Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner’s eyes poked out?

Or, for that matter, could he have “scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance” thrown on a prisoner? How about slitting an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What about biting?

These assaults are all mentioned in a U.S. law prohibiting maiming, which Yoo parsed as he clarified the legal outer limits of what could be done to terrorism suspects as detained by U.S. authorities. The specific prohibitions, he said, depended on the circumstances or which “body part the statute specifies.”

Iraq report details political hurdles and future options
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, April 6, 2008
A new assessment of U.S. policy in Iraq by the same experts who advised the original Iraq Study Group concludes that political progress is “so slow, halting and superficial” and political fragmentation “so pronounced” that the United States is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago.
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The experts were reassembled by the U.S. Institute of Peace, which convened the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group, a high-level panel that assessed U.S. policy in Iraq and offered recommendations in 2006. The new report predicts that lasting political development could take five to 10 years of “full, unconditional commitment” to Iraq, but also cautions that future progress may not be worth the “massive” human and financial costs to the United States.

Democrats should treat Petraeus and his surge as irrelevant
By Ira Chernus, TomDispatch, April 6, 2008
It was supposed to be a “cakewalk.” General Petraeus would come to Congress, armed with his favorite charts showing that the “surge” had dramatically reduced violence in Iraq. He would earn universal acclaim for his plan to “pause” troop reductions from July until after the election in November — the same plan that John McCain counts on to help him win that election.

When it comes to Iraq, though, the Bush administration’s cakewalks never seem to turn out as planned. The renewed violence of these last weeks in Iraq, and the prospect of more to come, gives war critics ample ammunition for a counterattack. The Democrats, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, may find it irresistible to assault the general, and the President, with every argument they can muster in the hearings this week. However, a recent report suggests they may resist that impulse and treat the impact of the surge as an irrelevant issue.

Let’s hope that report is right, because a debate focused on military success or failure is a trap, with Petraeus’s testimony as the bait. After all, no debate in Congress will really be about the level of violence in Iraq. “Has the surge worked?” is just a symbolic way of asking: “Would you rather believe that America is a winner or a loser?” And in any battle over patriotic symbolism, the Republicans always seem to have the bigger guns.

Army is worried by rising stress of return tours to Iraq
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, April 6, 2008
Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for this year and beyond.

Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of soldiers’ mental health.

The stress of long and multiple deployments to Iraq is just one of the concerns being voiced by senior military officers in Washington as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Iraq commander, prepares to tell Congress this week that he is not ready to endorse any drawdowns beyond those already scheduled through July.

Why the testimony of General Petraeus will be delusional
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, April 3, 2008
Since the Soviet Union vanished in 1991, only one nation has made itself at home everywhere on Earth; only one nation has felt that the planet’s interests and its own interests were essentially one; only one nation’s military garrisons and patrols our world from Greenland to the tropics, from the sea bed to the edge of space; only one nation’s military talks about its vast array of bases as its “footprint” on the planet; only one nation judges its essential and exceptional goodness, in motivation if nothing else, as justification for any act it may take.

Israel, U.S. plan to release details on Syria attack
By Barak Ravid and Amos Harel, Haaretz, April 6, 2008
Israel and the United States are coordinating the release of details on the air force strike in Syria last September, which foreign reports claim targeted a nuclear installation Syria was constructing with North Korean assistance. American officials may reveal details of the strike later this month during congressional hearings.

Even though the defense establishment in Israel is opposed to any publication of details of the attack, the Prime Minister’s Bureau and U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration are of the opinion that it is now possible to reveal details because there is little chance of a conflagration as a result of a Syrian decision to avenge the attack.

The prophetic anger of MLK
By Michael Eric Dyson, Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2008

On the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, few truths ring louder than this: Barack Obama and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. express in part the fallen leader’s split mind on race, a division marked by chronology and color.

Before 1965, King was upbeat and bright, his belief in white America’s ability to change by moral suasion resilient and durable. That is the leader we have come to know during annual King commemorations. After 1965, King was darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion.

King’s skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America, but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land. Nothing highlights that split — or white America’s ignorance of it and the prophetic black church King inspired — more than recalling King’s post-1965 odyssey, as he grappled bravely with poverty, war and entrenched racism. That is the King who emerges as we recall the meaning of his death. After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those “legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve” Northern ghettos or to “penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation.” In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 “were at best surface changes” that were “limited mainly to the Negro middle class.” In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks “are now making demands that will cost the nation something. … You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then.” [complete article]

Obama could actually win this thing (the Pa. primary)
By John Baer, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 2008
The average of multiple new polls, including one putting him slightly ahead, shows he has trimmed a large Clinton lead – 20 points in January, 16 last month – down to single digits, at 5.4.

His campaign yesterday announced that it raised $40 million in March amid persistent chatter that Hillary’s running low and reports that she raised just half that.

More money means more TV, and Obama’s clearly clubbing Clinton.

Clinton camp feels spent, and outspent
By Matthew Mosk, Washington Post, April 4, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton spent a second straight day holding fundraisers in California yesterday as part of an all-out effort to keep pace with the record amounts of money raised by Sen. Barack Obama, whose campaign announced that it pulled in $40 million in March, double Clinton’s $20 million take.

While her Democratic presidential rival took the day off in Chicago, Clinton held two fundraisers in Los Angeles and planned to raise money in New Mexico this weekend. She will leave the campaign trail on Wednesday to attend an Elton John concert in New York organized with a goal to raise $2 million.

In an attempt to further tap the online donor market that has largely funded Obama’s effort, Clinton plans to launch a new Internet program today that lets supporters choose where their money will go, much as wedding guests select gifts from a registry. Instead of china and crystal, users can purchase campaign signs, van rentals, airtime on radio stations and doorknob advertisements.

More than 1,000 in Iraq’s forces quit Basra fight
By Stephen Farrell and James Glanz, New York Times, April 4, 2008
More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.

The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.

Iraq: Dark shadows of things to come
By Wayne White, Middle East Institute, April 3, 2008
The Nuri al Maliki government’s failure to defeat Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra is yet another indication that beneath the widely acclaimed “success” of the surge is a country largely bereft of the legitimate governance required for genuine stability. Iran’s intermediary role between Maliki and Sadr suggests that what passes for an Iraqi central government is, in fact, little more than another actor on an Iraqi political scene still badly fragmented along factional lines.

At the conclusion of Prime Minister Maliki’s determined effort to wrest control of much of Basra from Sadr’s fighters, Sadr’s people reportedly controlled even more of the city than before. The government has lost face, Sadr’s standing has been considerably enhanced, and his defiance of the government, which he labeled a “Satan” in an interview with al-Jazeera, is unshaken. Past US and Iraqi government efforts to wear down Sadr’s forces with scattered attacks and arrests clearly have had little impact. Indeed, a Mahdi Army commander in Baghdad bragged last week: “We can take on anyone now.”

The popular appeal of the brash, anti-American and nationalistic young cleric among vast numbers of downtrodden Shi’a has been powerful. It may now exceed that of other more established movements such as that of leading rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).

Basra assault exposed U.S., Iraqi limits
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londono, Washington Post, April 4, 2008
When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an offensive in Basra last week, he consulted only his inner circle of advisers. There were no debates in parliament or among his political allies. Senior American officials were notified only a few days before the operation began.

He was determined to show, his advisers said, that Iraq’s central government could exert order over a lawless, strategic port city ruled by extremist militias. The advisers said Maliki wanted to demonstrate that he was a strong leader who could shed his reputation as a sectarian figure by going after fellow Shiites, and who could act decisively without U.S. pressure or assistance.

A week later, his ultimately unsuccessful gambit has exposed the shaky foundation upon which U.S. policy in Iraq rests after five years of war, according to politicians and analysts. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker are to report to Congress next week on Iraq’s progress.

Iraqi PM freezes raids targeting militia
By Hamid Ahmed, AP, April 4, 2008
Iraq’s prime minister on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militants after the leader of the biggest militia complained that arrests were continuing even after he ordered fighters off the streets.

The announcement was a major shift from comments Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a day earlier. It came after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia fought government troops last week, hinted at retaliation if arrests of his followers did not stop.

Al Qaeda #2: We’ll attack Iran
By Noah Shacktman, Wired, April 3, 2008
Recently, Senator John McCain has repeatedly indicated that Iran and al-Qaeda are in cahoots. The terror group’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would beg to differ. In a long-promised online Q&A session, Zawahiri says it would be “in the interest” of Al-Qaeda to see Iran “sap[ped]” by a fight with the United States. Moreover, he seems to promise that the extremist collective will “battle” whoever wins that U.S.-Iran struggle.

Who is Iraq’s “firebrand cleric”?
Patrick Cockburn interviewed by Mother Jones, March 31, 2008
Mother Jones: In the beginning of your book, you write that Muqtada al-Sadr leads “the only mass movement in Iraqi politics.” Can you elaborate on that, especially given that in the American media we still hear more about the official Iraqi government than some of these other factions?

Patrick Cockburn: It’s always sort of amazing, sitting here in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries—today we had Dick Cheney and John McCain—being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone. Muqtada leads the only real mass movement in Iraq. It’s a mass movement of the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population, and of poor Shia—and most Shia are poor. Otherwise the place is full of sort of self-declared leaders, many of whom spend most of their time outside Iraq. You know, if you want to meet a lot of Iraqi leaders, the best places are the hotels in Amman or in London. In general the government here is amazingly unpopular.

A teachable moment in Basra
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, April 2, 2008
It should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s disastrous offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr in Basra has had the exact opposite effect of that intended — strengthening rather than weakening Sadr, and making clear that he, and the Iranians, have far greater influence of Iraq’s future than does the Iraqi government or the U.S. That’s because Maliki’s shared the fate of pretty much every similar initiative by the Bush Administration and its allies and proxies since the onset of the “war on terror.”

The pattern is all too common: The U.S. or an ally or proxy launches a military offensive against a politically popular “enemy” group; Bush and his minions welcome the violence as “clarifying” matters, demonstrating “resolve”, or, in the most grotesque rhetorical flourish of all, the “birth pangs” of a brave new world. Each time, the “enemy” proves far more resilient than expected, largely because Bush and his allies have failed to recognize that each adversary’s power should be measured in political support rather than firepower; and the net effect of the offensive invariably leaves the enemy strengthened and the U.S. and its allies even weaker than before they launched the offensive.

Paltry result of Iraqi offensive quiets U.S. withdrawal talk
By Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy, April 1, 2008
The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon.

President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, “a defining moment” in Iraq’s history.

That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general.

The other Iraqi civil war
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, April 3, 2008
The battle of Basra may be virtually over. But nobody’s talking about the invisible Battle of Mosul.

President George W Bush’s self-described “defining moment” in Iraq amounted to this: General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) , brokered a deal in Qom, Iran, between Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s envoys and Hadi al-Amri, the head of the Badr Organization and number two to Adbul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and a key player of the government in Baghdad. That sealed the end of the battle of Basra.

The IRGC was designated last year by Washington as a terrorist organization. Thus Iranian “terrorists” brokered a peace deal between the two largest Shi’ite parties in Iraq – ending a Baghdad government offensive that was fully authorized and supported by air power by Washington, according to Bush’s National Security Adviser Steven Hadley. Even under Bush logic, “the terrorists” won, and Iran won – once again.

Meanwhile, in northern Iraq, the Kurds are meticulously involved in de facto annexing strategically crucial, oil-rich Tameem province, whose capital is Kirkuk, with reserves of up to 15 billion barrels. Sunni Arabs and Shi’ite Turkmen fear the prospect – and are dead-set against the postponed Kirkuk referendum, which should have been held on December 2007. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad knew for sure they would lose this vote and thus see Kirkuk become a part of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. So giving the excuse of “administrative problems”, they simply postponed the referendum.

Obama readies plan to reshape the electorate
By Ben Smith, Politico, April 2, 2008
Even as he fends off Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, Senator Barack Obama is already turning his attention to the general election, and to an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate in his favor.

Bringing new voters to the polls “is going to be a very big part of how we win,” said Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. “Barack’s appeal to independent voters is also going to be key.”

Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American voters, and voters under 35 years old, in key states.

Hillary’s wrong numbers: Obama polls up, Clinton funds down
Daily Intel, New York Magazine, April 1, 2008
To anyone tracking delegates, it’s been clear for more than a month that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is in mortal danger. But as long as she was battling Barack Obama at the polls every week, she could hope to control the narrative of the Democratic race, even if she was losing individual contests. And so her campaign kept sprouting new raisons d’être: the wisdom of superdelegates, the enfranchisement of Florida and Michigan, her supposed ability to carry big states.

No more. We’re now halfway through the six weeks between Mississippi and Pennsylvania, and this long interlude has washed away Clinton’s spin. Now her campaign is not only over. It’s obviously over.

Muslim true/false
By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2008
Winning hearts and minds — the Bush administration, foreign policy wonks, even the U.S. military agree that this is the key to any victory over global terrorism. Yet our public diplomacy program has made little progress on improving America’s image. Few seem to recognize that American ignorance of Islam and Muslims has been the fatal flaw.

How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66%) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have “a great deal” of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are “loyal” to this country, and one in four do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.

Meshal: Hamas backs Palestinian state in ’67 borders
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, April 2, 2008Hamas supports the united Palestinian position calling for the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, and the right of return for refugees, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal told the Palestinian daily Al-Ayam.

In a special interview with Wednesday’s edition of the paper, Meshal said the Palestinian position had received a vote of consensus during the national accords of 2006 and that this position is considered acceptable to the Arab world at large.

Meshal was asked about the claims by Israel and the United States that Hamas is seeking to destroy Israel. He said Hamas has committed itself to a political plan, which it follows, and called on the Americans, the Europeans and other international entities to conduct themselves in accordance with this political truth, and to judge Hamas based on its political plan, not based on what people may imagine.

Memo: Laws didn’t apply to interrogators
By Dan Eggen and Josh White, Washington Post, April 2, 2008
The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

Iranian who brokered Iraqi peace is on U.S. terrorist watch list
By Warren P. Strobel and Leila Fadel, McClatchy, March 31, 2008
The Iranian general who helped broker an end to nearly a week of fighting between Iraqi government forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen in southern Iraq is an unlikely peacemaker.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who helped U.S.-backed Iraqi leaders negotiate a deal with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to stop the fighting in Iraq’s largely Shiite south, is named on U.S. Treasury Department and U.N. Security Council watch lists for alleged involvement in terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology.

His role as peacemaker, which McClatchy first reported Sunday, underscores Iran’s entrenched political power and its alliances in Iraq, according to analysts.

Basra battle strengthens Sadr
By Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2008
The Iraqi government’s inability to oust Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia from Basra has boosted the fortunes of the Shiite cleric while damaging the standing of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Mr. Sadr appears to be the one clear winner from the inconclusive fighting in the country’s second-biggest city, which began to taper off Monday after the cleric urged his followers to observe a truce.

The failure of the Iraqi strikes against Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army has implications for both U.S. policy in Iraq and the presidential campaign.

Disunity in Damascus
By Ian Black, The Guardian, March 31, 2008
Muammar Gadafy is usually good for a laugh, and he raised some thin – if strained – smiles at the weekend’s Arab summit in Damascus when he took his fellow leaders to task for wasting his time and theirs. Talk of unity, complained Libya’s irrepressibly candid “brother leader”, was nonsense when Arab states spent their time plotting against each other, achieving nothing and standing idly by when one of their number (Saddam Hussein) was toppled by foreign armies.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and summit host, put a brave face on Gadafy’s jibes and the embarrassingly low turnout in his spanking new conference centre. But no-shows by 11 heads of state – exactly half the membership of the 22-strong Arab League – was hardly a ringing endorsement of an event described as expressing Arab solidarity or of his own country as “the beating heart of Arabism”.

Obama is the change that America has tried to hide
By Alice Walker, The Guardian, April 1, 2008
I have come home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination – a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the goddess of the three directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their “democratic” right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that white women have copied all too often the behaviour of their fathers and their brothers. In the south, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender-free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

Clinton slipping on trust
By Amy Chozick, Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2008
In the weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton not only lags Sen. Barack Obama in the race for delegates, she also is losing ground in her effort to convince voters that she is trustworthy.

The debate over her record has left Sen. Clinton confronting her lowest approval rating since April 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released last week.

According to the survey, 29% of the approximately 1,000 respondents said they had a very negative opinion of Sen. Clinton compared with 15% for Sen. Barack Obama and 12% for Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee.

The Coalition of the Unwilling
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, April 1, 2008
Last September, President Bush flew down to Sydney and urged Australian voters not to reject the leader he dubbed his “man of steel,” Prime Minister John Howard.

“I wouldn’t count the man out,” Bush said. “He’s kind of like me: We both have run from behind, and won.”

Australians weighed that advice and, two months later, emphatically dumped the conservative prime minister in favor of Labor leader Kevin Rudd — who had promised to sign the Kyoto accord on global warming and pull troops out of Iraq.

Now it’s time for Rudd’s revenge: a chance to meddle in domestic American politics the way Bush meddled in Australian affairs last year. “Consistent with my commitment to the Australian people, we are changing the configuration of our involvement in Iraq,” he told an audience yesterday morning at the Brookings Institution. “Our ground combat troops will be withdrawn.”